‘Len’s always been a bad lad. I thought you knew that.’

‘I knew he was a bit dodgy. Suspected it, anyway. I didn’t enquire too closely. I didn’t know he was a crim on that big a scale.’

‘So what now?’

It was Angel’s turn to shrug. ‘I get a job, I suppose. I divorce Lenny. I go on with my life.’

Unlike Tom, Angel found that she didn’t have a face that people warmed to. She went for office jobs, administrative assistant positions. She couldn’t type, didn’t have a clue. So she was destined to be a low-grade pen pusher. Some of the men who interviewed her liked the look of her because she was a gorgeous blonde with big sleepy blue eyes and large knockers. Most of the women who sat in on the interviews hated her on sight. Beauty in an office environment is usually disruptive, and they made their feelings about it pretty plain.

So Tom quickly got another job as a club manager, but the weeks passed and Angel was still unemployed. She reviewed her bank accounts. She was paying Tom rent and contributing to the food bills. She had enough of a cushion not to worry too much. At least, not for about six months. By then, she’d have to be in gainful employment. Once, when Mum was alive, they’d lived – thanks to Donny, the bastard – on next to nothing, so Angel easily slipped back into frugal habits. And she went for job after job after job.

She crawled back to Tom’s flat one Tuesday lunchtime, letting herself in with the key Tom had got cut for her. She’d been to yet another interview – this time, for a job in a medical wholesale company, and she knew even now that she hadn’t got it because the grim, charmless little woman interviewing her had taken against her on sight. Then she’d schlepped to the supermarket, bought a few pizzas and some vegetables, a chicken for their Sunday lunch. She’d cook, give Tom a treat. She could cook. She hadn’t in years, hadn’t needed to, and she was now rediscovering the skill and finding that she actually enjoyed it.

Angel opened the door, hefting carrier bags, dumping them down on the floor. Then she looked ahead to the kitchenette and saw the woman standing there.

‘Oh!’ she said in surprise. The woman had thick straight black hair peppered with grey. She was in her fifties and she looked familiar. Then it clicked. It was the one who’d been at Mum’s funeral. The same one who laid flowers on Dora’s grave once a fortnight. It was her Aunt Lil. Tom’s mum.

‘Well don’t look so surprised,’ said Lil, putting the cup she’d been drying down on the draining board. She laid aside the tea towel. ‘I do come here now and then. Tidy up a bit. Bake a cake. Make sure Tom’s not starving himself.’

The ludicrous idea of Tom starving himself almost made Angel smile. Tom ate like a horse, even though he was thin as a rake. She closed the door behind her.